The present invention relates generally to data management systems. More specifically, the present invention relates to systems and methods for storing, manipulating, and accessing data in data management systems.
In many business environments, data management systems have evolved along with the business. As new needs for maintaining data arise, the business typically modifies existing systems to satisfy the new need. It is common, however, for a need to arise that overwhelms the capacity of existing systems or taxes its original design scope of operation. This may occur for many reasons. For example, operational support systems are not typically designed for data reporting, yet new requirements may depend on reporting on the data such systems maintain. Further, the need for data reporting may require information from different systems in which the needed information is maintained differently. Further still, historical reporting may be needed from systems not designed to maintain historical data. In such cases, the effort to efficiently access the data for the reports may require modifications beyond the capability of the present systems. As another example, it may be the case that the sheer volume of data stored in diverse systems makes efficiently accessing the data difficult. Data queries may require too much time to process, rendering the systems unacceptable for new tasks. In yet another example, it may be impossible to obtain accurate data in multiple dynamic systems because the information may change before the necessary information is obtained from each of the systems. In other words, the data in the various systems may not be point-in-time synchronized. For these reasons, new methods of accessing data from different systems are needed. New methods of managing the data are also needed.